Words from Sabumnim

What is Martial Arts?

Martial Arts is such a broad practice with too many different traditions to answer this question with one blanket explanation. But it is a question that I have been asked often. After training in and teaching Martial Arts for over 47 years, I feel my knowledge and understanding of the Martial Arts is still in its infancy stage. But I’ve come to know this: very few people, if any, are qualified to thoroughly answer the question “What is Martial Arts?”

So when I’m asked this question, I do explain that there can be many interpretations of what Martial Arts is for many people, and the best thing I can do is to share what I have witnessed, learned and experienced during my short journey within Martial Arts:

Martial Arts can be the best total package for long-term physical, mental, emotional, and moral health. Besides elevating your physical fitness, it also expands your personal awareness and power. It’s a path of self-discovery; it’s a road to recovery. It’s a tool of transformation; it’s a journey of the heart and soul. It’s a way of finding, harnessing, and developing your hidden gifts and talents that may have laid dormant deep inside of you all of your life. It’s a method of raising and expanding personal consciousness. It’s a way of grounding oneself in reality and connecting to life’s deeper meaning and higher purpose.

Martial Arts is the pursuit and practice of personal development. It’s a method of combating laziness, negativity, and ignorance. It’s a system of developing worthy habits and illuminating unworthy ones. It’s a system of maximizing your highest potential. It’s a compass to aid you in choosing a life direction and destiny. It can be the best guide through the many stages and seasons of life. Martial Arts is a philosophy of respect, discipline, focus, determination, courage, justice, balance, order, harmony, and peace. It’s a philosophy of action and personal exploration of your outer world and your inner world. It’s a mirror and a light into the soul.

It’s the ultimate personal protection plan. It’s the ability to protect your self and those you love. It’s a bodyguard-training program. It’s a true health care system and real health insurance. It’s an investment into your future best self. The practice of Martial Arts dissolves fear and develops courage. It minimizes self-doubt and it builds self-confidence. It teaches you how to turn obstacles and stumbling blocks into stepping-stones and breakthroughs that lead to satisfaction and fulfillment. It’s a path to personal freedom, a climb to self-control, a path to self-mastery. It’s the development of personal power that can lead to the envelopment of personal peace. It’s the ability to accept victory, and the strength to embrace surrender. It’s the possibility of hope and the gifts of life. It’s a gift that keeps giving and continuously grows in value. It’s an energy and potential to be and become anything you choose to be.

Martial Arts is a daily practice, a life-long challenge. It’s everything and it’s nothing. In the end, it’s the culmination of the material, experiences and lessons given to you through your Master, and what you have earned, gained and developed from it. But most of all, it is both what you have personally made it to be for yourself and what you have allowed it to become. Everything I have said about the question “ What is Martial arts?” can also be said about the following questions “ What is a martial arts school?” “What is a Dojang?” So my questions for you are about your martial arts, your martial arts school, your Dojang. 1- What have you made it to be for yourself? 2- What have you allowed it to become? 3- What will you make of it from this moment on?

Grandmaster Chi Young Lin will be holding a Beginner’s Tai Chi Instructor Certification training for martial arts instructors who are interested in expanding their knowledge base and skills of the Chinese internal martial arts practices and their connections to Aikido, Hapkido and other martial arts. The training will be a six week program.

The fee for the complete Beginner’s Tai Chi Instructor’s Certification is $999, However Grandmaster Lin is offering it this time for $299 because of the love and respect he has always had for our school.

All are welcome to attend.
If you are interested, and want to learn more, please talk to Sabumnim.

SIGN YOUR CHILD UP FOR AFTERSCHOOL 2017!Sign up HERE by 9/6 for a full week to receive your first day for FREE!

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Thank You Lauren and the Summer Camp Staff!

Summer Camp ended yesterday, and we just want to give a big shout out to Lauren and the summercamp staff for their amazing work. We had over fifty new children participating in the 7 week summer camp program, who gained a greater sense of confidence, new friendships and fun memories. Thank you Lauren for being here everyday for 10 hours, teaching, leading, mothering, managing and creating a happy, learning experience for all the children. A BIG THANKS also goes to her supporting staff: Alex, Mateo, and Jonathan. As well as to Monica, Angelique and Subrina for being there whenever needed. Thanks also goes to WMAC students Noel McNeal for his puppetry, and Jean Menesky and his friend Alexandra for their Haitian drumming and parade. FANTASTIC JOB EVERYONE!

What is Pain Science and Why it Matters

by Tania Velasquez

Everyone experiences aches and pains once in awhile. Pain resulting from recent injury is called acute pain and it usually tapers off within a few days to a few months once tissues have healed, barring any underlying disease. But how do we explain pain that sometimes persists long after damaged tissues have recovered or account for pain that seems to come out of nowhere? What causes someone to continue hurting without any tissue damage? Conversely, how do others with severe injuries experience ZERO sensations of pain and continue functioning (ex. shark attack victims, athletes playing with broken limbs) while a few with otherwise “normal” tissues suffer excruciating pain with the slightest movement?

These are the billion dollar questions surrounding the complex epidemic of chronic pain, which affects 1 in 5 people. And this is what pain science - a branch of science that emerged over the past 50 years - sets out to solve. Though pain is a universal experience, its individual biological intricacies make it wildly varied and equally baffling. Pain science is to healthcare as computer science has been to the digital revolution. For the general public to garner knowledge about how their brains and bodies truly work has become as important as learning how to use a keyboard. There is always room to learn how to live in our bodies a little better, because we are in them for life.

At the cost of $635 billion annually, chronic pain in the U.S., supercedes the yearly costs for cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined [Link]. It’s also at the root of an opiate addiction crisis causing ⅔ of all drug related deaths. Patients are spending more money on pain interventions than ever (mainstream, “new”, and alternative methods combined), but the pain population is getting increasingly worse - not better. Clearly, something isn’t working and technically, we all know at least 1 person living with some form of debilitating chronic pain.

Pain science seeks to explain the mechanisms behind all interventions, from conventional to alternative, helping usmaintain the perspective that pain is not an accurate reflection of the state of our tissues. Rather, it's a complicated web of biological, sociological, and cognitive processes. This awareness encourages us to foster an alternative connection with our bodies. A general understanding of the subject can help us function better overall and recognize signs in someone who may be dealing with chronic pain, which often leads to isolation. As a result of how humans are neurologically wired, chronic pain can cause biological changes that lead to clinical depression and anxiety. But there is hope!

Pain is a stressful and multi-faceted phenomenon. Attempting to pigeon-hole or find a singular cause for it has led to perpetuating problems, rather than finding solutions. Often pain is not a symptom of any one thing. Because humans are so different and nuanced, so must be our approaches in dealing with pain. The good news is we can reframe our assumptions and retrain our brains to alter our body’s experience of pain and influence its level of intensity, whether with acute or chronic pain. Breakthroughs in pain science are being made everyday. A general understanding of how a potentially threatening stimulus is processed by the brain and perceived as pain is one key to helping society manage it better as a whole.

Get Ready for NINJA Night!

Join Sabumnim and the WMAC staff for a fun filled night of ninja activities! A movie, 2 special trainings with Sabumnim and lots more! Bring your sleeping bags and pjs to sleep over with your fellow Ninjas!

WHAT TO BRING:
Dobok,
Nunchucks if you have them,
Sleeping bag,
PJs,
Tooth brush

WHAT NOT TO BRING:
Cell phones,
Electronics,
Toys from home

This events is limited to 20 kids. Fills up fast, so sign up right away.Click HERE

Join us at Atlantic Antic to help promote WMAC!

Sign up for a special demo, set up and break down of our space, hand out flyers and help at the table. Sunday, September 24th from 10am to 6pm. Find a two hour slot when you can volunteer your time! Sign up at the front desk.

We will also have an Open House Day with free 20 minute trial classes,
1 - 4pm. SPREAD THE WORD!

Bodan Class on Thursdays at 6:15pm

Bodans! Join Sabumnim's 6:15 class on Thursdays for Black Belt testing preparation. Sabumnim will be going over correcting all the basics to make them sharper.

HapKiDo curriculum USB keys are available for purchase at the front desk. Each one is packed with techniques, forms and a lot of extra material, and can be easily accessed from your computer, tablet, iPad or phone. The USB keys will make it much easier and faster to learn your test requirements. They will also lessen the stress level of those that feel they have a challenging time remembering new material. The price runs from $30 to $40 depending on the amount of information they contain.

The superior being perseveres long in their course, adapts to the times, but remains firm in their direction and correct in their goals. It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized.